PROPRIETY, or appropriateness of manner in speaking,the fifth of the good qualities of style,-implies, with reference to the speaker himself, personally, that he possesses the two great requisites to success in gaining and securing attention, in public address, dignity and moderation of manner. The public speaker presents himself in circumstances naturally inviting and calling for a proper self-respect. He has before him an assemblage of his fellow-men, whom he is bound in honor, and by courtesy, to respect. The subject on which he is about to address them is, probably, one of serious moment, if not of the utmost consequence to them and to him. The occasion itself may be one of grave importance to the welfare of a whole com munity; and the thought that, on his success or failure, measures vital to that community may depend, precludes every association of levity or trivial character, or low familiarity of address. He is, by his very position, elevated to a moral dignity, of which, if he has the proper feelings of a man, he can not be unaware; and to which, if he is worthy of his station, his whole bearing will correspond.

Dignity of mien, as inseparable from the proprieties of public address, is opposed to every thing wearing the aspect of a paltry trick of low personal habit; ill-formed manners; rude, abrupt deportment; careless, lounging attitudes; swaggering, or jerking or twitching movements; odd peculiarities of action; unconscious and absent-minded acts of a ridiculous or an unmeaning character; violent gesticulation; frequent and uncalled for change of posture; mincing, trivial, mimetic, or ungraceful gestures. No cultivated audience can long endure the infliction of such traits of manner, or retain their respect for any speaker who is so culpably forgetful of what he owes to to them and to himself.

True dignity of manner in address, appears chiefly in calmness, quietness, and due reserve, in the prevalence of a staid and subdued manner, implying self-respect and self-reliance, intimating, in unobtrusive language, a just feeling of the speaker's ability to meet the occasion which calls him forth, and of his

proper title to the respectful attention of his hearers. It is naturally manifest in the characteristic details of manly and firm attitude, noble gesture, composure of mien, and deliberate expression.

Propriety of manner in public speaking implies not only dig. nity of attitude and action, but that moderation in expression which bespeaks the orator's clear perception that force is not violence, nor energy exaggeration. He may, under the excitement of strong emotion, occasionally rise to vehemence. But even his vehemence will never be extravagance. Ungov. erned rage, which some speakers mistake for the fire of true eloquence, can never move a judicious audience but to pity or contempt. Even the player is reminded, by the great master of dramatic eloquence, that, in the very tempest of impassioned utterance, he must "beget a temperance that shall give it smoothness." The poet is allowed to be rapt, sometimes, in the ecstacy of his inspiration; but the orator is expected ever to remain master of himself, that he may be master of his audi ence; and, even in his most vehement or fiery words of utter ance, to have a deliberate purpose still holding the check-rein on passion. To the surges of emotion he still remains able to "Thus far, and no farther."

say,

The moderation which his reflective judgment prescribes, saves the true speaker from all those excesses of manner which, although they may indicate the sincerity of the orator's heart, do little credit to his head, and only serve to lower him in the respect of his audience, and, so far, to injure himself and his cause. That moderation which withholds strong effects till they are due, and then bounds them by the limits of judgment and manly reserve, commands, invariably, the profound respect of the hearers, and renders them more willingly and more deeply susceptible of his influence.

Moderation, as a characteristic of manner in speaking, restrains all tendency to violent gesticulation and convulsive movement, to incessant action and restless motion, to every form of exaggeration and extravagance in gesture, to the star

ing eyes and distorted features of ungoverned and infuriated expression. In dramatic recitation, and, sometimes, even in the intensity of lyric style, great scope is unquestionably due to emotion. But, even in these forms of expression, the judicious speaker knows how to distinguish between the breadth and force of theatrical effect, and that which belongs to the chaster style of the lecture-room or the academic platform.

SUGGESTIONS ON ATTITUDE AND ACTION.

From the prominent principles of gesture, stated in the preceding paragraphs, may be deduced the details of attitude and action, as they apply to practice and training in prose declamation and poetic recitation.

ATTITUDE.—A true, firm, easy, and graceful position for public address, requires that the weight of the body should rest, principally, on one foot,—not on both feet equally. The latter posture renders the attitude of the whole body stiff and rigid, deprives the action of the arm of the free and consentaneous play of the whole muscular system, and gives a mechanical air to every motion of gesture.

The distance at which the feet should be placed, is regulated by the requirements of firmness of support and freedom of action. By a posture too wide, freedom becomes negligence and slovenliness, or the style habitually used by the seaman, as he steadies himself against the rolling of his ship. By a position too narrow, firmness becomes stiffness and primness, as in the mechanical and rigid attitude of the soldier on drill. A convenient natural measure for the distance of the feet, as required by the firm and easy and graceful support of the human body, in the standing and speaking attitude, is a width equal to that of the broadest part of the foot. Precision and nicety are not required in this matter; but a material deviation, either way, from such a standard, always incurs one of the two faults mentioned above.

The relative position of the feet, for the convenient and proper attitude of address, in public speaking, presents one foot

in advance of the other, at the distance mentioned, as the space between the heels, while the feet are placed with the toes turned outward so far as to create a right angle by two lines, if drawn one under the middle of the sole of each foot, and intersecting each other under the heel of the retired foot. The position may be represented thus:

Fig. 1.

The shaded sole represents here that of the left foot, which for the time is supposed to bear the chief weight of the body, while the right merely supports that of the corresponding limb. The advantage of this position is that of firmness, freedom, convenience, and grace, as contrasted with the effects of the two styles already described, which might be represented, as in Fig. 2, for the former, and, as in Fig. 3, for the latter of the two.

The true position, (Fig. 1.) avoids, also, the ungainliness and inconvenience of another common error in the position of the feet, which plants them parallel, and pointing in a line drawn straight forward from the speaker's body, thus:

In the three false positions, the weight of the body bears upon both feet equally, producing either a clumsy or a stiffened attitude of the whole body, while the true posture gives pliancy and flexibility

Fig

to the whole frame, and enables the speaker to address his whole audience—not merely the hearers immediately in front of him, but those, also, as easily, who are seated on his right and on his left, without the necessity of shifting his feet, but merely by a slight turn of the body. He thus commands, without effort, the whole sphere of his address, and secures the attention of all his audience. But the speaker who falls into any of the three faults exemplified, has either wholly to neglect

all of his hearers seated on his right and left, and make a military wheel, or a formal turn, at intervals, to avoid the apparent neglect. The shift of position, however, either way, does little good; as it causes him to turn his back on the part of his audience from which, for the moment, he wheels away. Further, when a change of attitude is required by a bold strain of address demanding an advance of the speaker's person, the true position causes no farther change than merely the easy one of passing the weight of the body to the advanced foot, which brings the whole person forward. So when a passage of quiet expression occurs, and naturally suggests a slight receding of the whole body, no other movement is needed than merely that of leaning back, and permitting the weight of the person to rest on the retired foot. The speaker, on the contrary, who falls into any one of the wrong positions, has to go through a formal and conspicuous change of attitude, and then only to resume the inconvenient and ungraceful posture which he exhibited before.

Easy, natural, and appropriate change of attitude, at every obvious change in the current of thought,-as in commencing new heads of a subject and new paragraphs of composition,is one of the most obvious aids to freedom of manner in the speaker, and to relief of attention on the part of the hearer. A careful regard to this point, therefore, in the practice of exercises, is of great moment to the student's success in declamation; and, although but apparently a slight affair, in itself, it tells, with great effect, as a genuine trait of appropriate manner and eloquent expression. It is, in fact, a necessary accompaniment to the change of voice which naturally indicates the closing of one topic or paragraph and the commencement of a new one. The natural language of attitude requires attention to the following considerations.

(1.) When the expression of thought is not accompanied by strong emotion, attitude naturally indicates repose, and is therefore quiet and retired, rather than active and advanced. The posture of the feet, accordingly, is that in which the